Harmony.
The two Sparrow teeth flickered to dissonant life. Fie wrestled with both until the chord struck and prayed it would be enough.
Fie saw the gaze before she saw the Vulture, lit up by the Sparrow teeth. The skinwitch’s attention flicked and pried about the trees like a forked tongue, lingering on any snapped twigs or traces of nail-lined soles. This was the true face of the Vulture Birthright, the hunger of a predator stalking a scent. The jingle of bridle and creak of saddle leather slid into a creeping dirge, measured in the drumbeat of hooves.
What had Tavin said of the queen’s Vultures a week past? Tatterhelm wasn’t the best of the trackers. He was all twelve hells to cross just the same. He had Rhusana’s favor.
And likely he had Fie’s family.
Fie didn’t know if she wanted to see Tatterhelm, or a Vulture who was a few less hells to cross.
The branch shivered as Tavin shifted. She caught a muffled hiss—and then quiet. The Hawk alone knew true how bad he’d been wounded. But if healing himself burned as much as when he’d healed her, for once, she didn’t envy him.
He’d be fine. He’d be back on his feet soon enough, armed with his short swords and his smiles deadlier still, back to vexing her at every turn.
He’d saved her life. Broken her fall.
He had to be fine.
The skinwitch rode into sight, below ragged curtains of needled boughs: Tatterhelm.
For a heartbeat Fie was back in another tree a week before, watching an Oleander lord try to smoke them out. Where the lord had shouted and cursed and threatened, though, Tatterhelm spoke not a single word. Instead he paced, studying the forest about them with the patience of a man certain of victory. And with good reason: she could see his gaze alight upon one track after another, drawing closer to their tree.
One of Tatterhelm’s fists stayed clenched tight around a strange fistful of dried leaves.
The string of teeth twitched at her throat. Fie started. Her own fingers had already plucked at a Phoenix molar.
Give him fire.
That voice didn’t even sound like a Phoenix’s anymore.
Tatterhelm dragged on the reins. His mount grunted and stopped, pawing at the needle-strewn ground. Sharp pine resin wafted up the warm air.
Now, her own damned head urged. Give him fire. Teach them you’re not to be crossed.
Give him fire and you bring the whole rutted lot of them down on you, her Chief voice snapped back. Pick that fight when your Hawk isn’t in pieces.
And a dreadful mutinous part of her yet wondered when she’d started calling Tavin her Hawk.
The Sparrow teeth squawked and slid out of tune.
Harmony, Pa’s voice chided as she scrambled to push the teeth back into order, fingers digging into the uneven bark.
The skinwitch’s searchlight crept up toward her.
She ground her teeth, holding the harmony as steady as she could. It wavered as the Vulture picked and peeled at the slippery edges of the Sparrow teeth’s refuge. Panic simmered in her gut and clawed finger by finger up her spine. They’d already been caught, Tatterhelm only meant to toy with her, hiding was no use—
Bitter fury boiled up with the fear.
She was so, so sick of hiding. Just once—
Teach them how you look after your own.
Her Phoenix teeth warmed on their string.
No. Fie swallowed, fighting for a steady head. Tatterhelm wasn’t the best, but he was good enough to break through her teeth, and that was aught that mattered. Two weren’t enough to hold off his gaze.
Pa sometimes used three teeth.
But Pa hadn’t taught her how.
Pain shot through Fie’s index finger as a sliver of bark burrowed beneath the nail, yet her hold on the branch only tightened. Forget three, she’d need a lone Phoenix tooth and then she’d have vengeance for Pa, for her kin—
It could be so easy. The Sparrow-tooth harmony began to fray.
Tatterhelm reached for a hunting horn at his belt.
Their branch shuddered—Tavin had tipped off-balance—
She seized his hand, rough with dried blood and slate dust.
And a third Sparrow tooth sparked awake on her string.
Fie’s bones didn’t just hum, they sang, an awful drone that felt like it might shake her straight into the next life. It took all her focus to pin the tooth into harmony, into balance, and to keep it there—but then there it stayed, each tooth steadying the other two in turn like the legs of a stool. Tatterhelm’s gaze sloughed away like an old scab.
And after a long moment, he rode on.
Each dwindling hoofbeat was an accusation. He had dead Crows to answer for, and Fie—she had enough fire teeth to light Sabor from mountain to coast.
But what she wanted didn’t matter.
Tavin, too, had steadied out. She pulled her hand free of his and looked away.
Three Sparrow teeth. Fie let her senses roam, prodding at what the triad could reveal. Nearer to Gerbanyar, she half saw, half sensed something like distant cobwebby nets casting about over the treetops. The nearest one already trailed dreamily toward them, just half a league off.
It had to be the rest of the trackers aiming to sniff them out. One thing was sore sure: she didn’t want to be any nearer those webs than she had to be. Tatterhelm had ridden on far enough now. It was time to move.
Fie let the third Sparrow tooth go and slipped off the branch, intending to dangle from her fingertips.
Instead every bone in her hands dragged like iron. Her fingers slipped off the branch. She hit the ground in a flurry of pine needles and crowsilk, knocking the wind clean out of her gut.
She gasped as cedar boughs and silvery sky spun dizzily above. A thin whine rang through her ears, the only sound until a thud said one of the boys had made it down as well.
Tavin lurched into view. He looked much better. At least she thought he did. Less blood, less flinching. Maybe no limping now. That meant he was better, right?
His mouth moved, but she caught no words, only a dull ringing. He really had a nice mouth. Even with a little blood streaked at one corner.
She almost believed the fear on his face. He’d gotten hurt for her today. Almost died. A lot. Kin might do that. Caste might do that. Not some near-royal lordling. It made no sense. He made no sense.
He crouched by her side, and as Fie’s thoughts slipped and wobbled about in her rattled skull, one thought drifted, dreadful and plain, to the surface: she wanted that.
She wanted him to stay at her side. Not for the day, not for the moon. She wanted him with her even after the oath. She wanted it more than she knew how to want someone. She wanted it more than fire or steel or teeth.
And she wholeheartedly hated it.
“… hear me?” Tavin’s voice seeped in past the ringing in her ears, rising with worry. “Fie? Are you hurt?”
She blinked up at him as her head began to clear. Then she laughed.
It was not a happy laugh.
A raid from monsters. A scummed sinner. The first throat she’d ever cut. A war-witch boiling a man in his own blood before her eyes. An ambush from the queen’s pet Vultures. That same war-witch near snapping his own neck on her account. Tatterhelm walking away in one piece. Falling out of a stupid tree.
And a traitor heart that refused to listen to sense.
She hated it. Hated all of it. Hated him. Hated herself.
“Anything else?” she croaked, waving a shaky, blood-flecked hand at the sky. “Covenant? Got any more disasters you’re keen to spit my way? Day’s still young.”
Tavin let out a breath, then brushed her hair aside to rest calloused fingertips on her brow. “Let’s not go giving the Covenant any ideas. Can you move your—”
“Let’s not go telling me what to do.” Fie swatted his hand off and made herself sit up, a peculiar wrath aching in her bones. He had no right to her, to any part of her, least of all her heart. “You damned fool. We could have been in and out of Gerbanyar before Tatterhelm caught up, but you just had to lose your head, didn’t you?”
Tavin jerked back, shamefaced. Part of her curled with guilt. He’d felled that man on her account.
But she hadn’t asked for it. Wanted it, perhaps, in the ugly way she’d wanted Tatterhelm to burn before her. But wanting and asking were beasts of two wholly different names.
“We’re lucky the Gerbanyar Hawks didn’t stuff us all full of arrows on the spot,” she spat. “The queen would’ve liked that, aye? You’d have done her work for her.”
Tavin stared at the ground. Maybe if she pushed him far enough, this nonsense of theirs would be over. He’d stop pretending a Crow and a Hawk could share a road as aught but strangers, and she’d keep pretending it didn’t matter to her.
The razor edge of anger glittered in his eyes again. The set of his mouth said it wouldn’t be turned on her.
Somehow that only infuriated her more. “What, Vulture got your tongue? You couldn’t keep quiet when all our hides were on the line, but now it suits you? You’ve mummed as my kin for nigh a fortnight now. When are you going to understand that being a Crow means you can’t just do what you want?”
“Don’t try to tell me I do what I want,” Tavin snapped.
He rocked back on his heels. One hand ran over his mouth, fingertips pushing down into the sides of his jaw. Then he stood and looked away.
In the startled silence, Fie wondered if she’d meant her words for Tavin or for herself.
The prince’s voice cut through the air. “Enough. It’s not his fault.”
“If by ‘not his fault’ you mean ‘square his fault,’ then aye.”
“He saved your life not ten minutes ago.” Jasimir’s tone soured on your. “Haven’t you been berating us since day one for not standing up for the Crows? Make up your mind whether you want our help or not.”
“You call that help? Your Peacocks and Hawks listen to crowns, not Crows. Deal with them when you’re not hiding behind our masks, and I’ll call that help.”
“I already swore an oath to do just that, and if you think that won’t cost me dearly—”
“Oh aye, such a trial,” Fie sneered. “Poor little princeling has to treat us like people.”
Tavin spoke before the prince could fire back. “We need to get moving.”
“To where?” Fie lurched to her feet, wearing a scowl. “The Vultures know we’re headed northeast. They’ll block the flatway to the Marovar.”
“We don’t have anywhere else,” Tavin said shortly. “They can’t go too far from their supply caravan, which slows them down in bad terrain. We can keep ahead of them if we stay off the roads.”
Fie sucked in a breath. “I won’t be able to see plague beacons.”
“No,” Tavin agreed, “you won’t.”
He didn’t know what he was asking. Lordlings got to look away when they wanted to. Fie’d never had a choice in keeping her eyes open.
“You won’t be able to walk us into another trap,” the prince muttered.
“Jas.” Tavin shook his head.
Fie waited for the rest of what he ought to say: I know we’re asking more of you. But your Crows need you. We need you. I need you.
She knew it all already. Believed some of it. The rest—the rest she wanted from him.
But he didn’t offer another word. And she would not ask.
Perhaps she’d pushed him far enough after all.
Perhaps she’d pushed too far.
But going off the roads … She’d already turned her back on her kin. What would the Covenant think of her turning her back on sinners?
Didn’t want to be a Crow no more.
Fie’s hands curled into dust-lined fists. The Covenant knew the oath she carried now. And Pa wanted her to keep it. It was plain as that.
She shifted her pack and squinted for where afternoon sunlight needled through the cedar boughs. “We go northeast,” she said finally, and set off through the trees, back to the sun.
Fie’s hands burned with salt in a hundred tiny scrapes, and yet she kept scrubbing.
The sun had long slunk below the horizon before they’d stopped for the night. They’d pushed up in thick silence through the bristling hills, up into rockier ground, onto thinner game trails, always searching the growing dark for skinwitches closing in. When they’d staggered to a halt by a pond in the crook of a steep hillside, she’d waited for the boys to refill the water skins, then burned the remains of her arm-rags on the campfire and took the salt and soap-shells to the pond.
She couldn’t wash up proper here, not a few paces from the campfire. Even though Tavin had been badgered into sleeping while dinner cooked and the prince didn’t shine to girls at all, stripping down in front of lordlings didn’t sit right.
But scrub as she might, she couldn’t shake the memory of Pa’s sword sliding through flesh. By firelight, the salt and suds on her arms might as well have been blood. Even a string of bubbles on the pond’s surface reminded her of the gash across the sinner’s throat.
“Was that your first time killing someone?”
Fie started. The prince had perched by the campfire, stirring a mash of maize and salt pork, one eye on Tavin’s sleeping back.
“Aye,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
Jasimir frowned at the mash. “You … your family should have been here to help.”
Near a week had passed since she’d left them in Cheparok, yet a hot lump still rose in Fie’s throat. She splashed cold water on her arms. “Have you ever killed someone?”
He shook his head. “Tavin has. Before today, I mean. One of Rhusana’s assassins went down fighting, and another fell on her own poisoned dagger, so Tavin put her out of her misery.”
“That’s … nice of him?”
“It’s how we were raised. The Hawk code requires you to treat an enemy with dignity, even in death.” Jasimir let the campfire roll around his fingers.
Fie straightened and scoured the hillsides, calling up two Sparrow teeth she’d kept simmering, then working in a third for just a moment. The only Vulture signs the triad showed were those gauzy webs still near Gerbanyar.
She let the third tooth go and returned to the fire, stretching her arms out to help them dry. “Pa never said if it got easier.”
“It shouldn’t.” Tavin sat up, rubbing his eyes. “It does.”
“Go back to sleep,” the prince said at once. “You need to recover. I’ll take your watch.”
“I’m fine. Besides, how could I sleep through a feast like this?” He flashed a smile Fie didn’t buy for a second. Neither did she miss how his eyes swept the dark.
She salted their paltry dinner anyhow, trying not to fret over their dwindling rations. Four days without viatik made for thin fare, and she wasn’t about to march back into Gerbanyar to collect pay.
She wasn’t alone in her worries. “We’re not going to make it to the Marovar like this,” Jasimir said around a mouthful of maize. “Even if we had enough food, we’d freeze on the first mountain.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Tavin said.
“No, we need to come up with a plan.” Jasimir pushed a strip of dried panbread about his bowl. “We’re farther north now. Maybe—”
Tavin shook his head. “Not again, Jas.”
“The Hawks could escort us there faster.”
“Or they could hand us over to Tatterhelm for an early solstice present.” Tavin tried to make it sound like a joke. The strain in his voice hamstrung any levity. “The Gerbanyar Hawks weren’t exactly throwing themselves between us and the Vultures.”
“Then we find other Hawks.”
“No, Jas.”
“They’re Hawks, they have a code—”
“I said no.” Tavin’s voice flattened from amiable to unmovable. “It’s my job to keep you in one piece. Let me do it.”
Fie knew an order when she heard one. Even if it was aimed at a prince.
A faint howl silenced them, rising and falling with the breeze. Wind on rocks, that was all, yet Fie waited to be sure before she took up her dinner again.
She chewed her maize, glancing between Tavin, who stirred the fire, and the prince, who stared at the coals. “You can have my watch, cousin,” she offered, half-jesting.
Tavin wasn’t taking any chances. “No he can’t.”
Jasimir’s fists tightened to knots on his knees. He picked up his empty bowl and the cooking pot and stalked off to wash them at the far side of the pond.
“Fie, when you’re done…” Tavin tossed a burned-out Peacock tooth into the grass. “The glamour’s nearly gone.”
She picked out a Peacock witch-tooth from the bag, then scooted over. Tavin took the kindled tooth from her with a ghost of a flinch.
“How are you doing?” he asked. At Fie’s puzzled look, he ducked his head. “The first time I took a life, I threw up. On the corpse, in fact.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Don’t you Hawks have some high-minded rule about respecting the dead?”
“This may shock you, but it turns out Hawks don’t always follow our own rules,” Tavin said, dry. His eyes followed her as she swept the glamour over his face. “But I was trained to kill people and I still felt awful. Are you all right?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, cursing in her head. She knew it was best to finish the glamour and be done with it, but her wretched tongue kept wagging anyway. “My job’s to cut throats, so what does it matter? I’ll get all right by it. Someday.”
He started to answer, just as her fingers trailed to that wretched distracting freckle by the corner of his mouth. They both froze a breath too long.
“I think I should teach you to use a sword,” Tavin blurted.
Fie jerked her hand away before it made a fool of her. “What?”
“Everyone needs a hobby.” He rubbed the back of his neck, as if trying to scrape together another jest. “And an appalling number of Saborians seem to have picked ‘murdering Crows’ for theirs.” Tavin pointed to Pa’s broken sword. “I guarantee fewer people would try to stiff you on viatik if they thought you could use that for more than mercy.”
“You’ve seen how your kind feel about Crows carrying swords. How do you reckon the Hawks’ll like Crows knowing how to use them?”
“I’m not teaching all the Crows, I’m teaching you. And if we get Jas on the throne, the Hawks will be so busy escorting your people around that they might see the wisdom of teaching them, too.”
She pursed her lips. He could have offered this anytime in the last fortnight. Anytime before now. He hadn’t. This had naught to do with hobbies. “You don’t think we can outrun the Vultures?”
Tavin looked to the prince, guilt flashing through his face. Jasimir was still on the far side of the pond. “I should know better than to try slipping anything past you. I don’t know when we’ll cross them again. But it’s still a long way to the Marovar, with or without roads. And after today…” He faltered. “I just—I want you to be able to protect yourself.”
And the pieces fell together for Fie. This wasn’t wholly about the Vultures either. It was also about the Sparrow crooning death threats, and it was about the crowd who’d cheered him on. “I’m carrying enough Phoenix teeth to burn us a road clear to the Marovar and back. You know why I let that scummer yell as he pleased?” she asked. Tavin shook his head. “Because he wanted an excuse to do worse. That’s the game, get it? They’ve naught to lose by playing with us. And there’s no way for us to win.”
“So you let them talk and cut your losses.” He shook his head again. “That’s … You shouldn’t have to live like that.”
“Aye. And that’s why I asked for Hawks.” She staggered to her feet, ignoring the ache of weary muscles and the warning clamor of her own head. “But until I get them, I suppose it’s worth knowing how to use a sword.”
What was she playing at? Pa’s tooth rolled in her fingers. Crows weren’t allowed steel.
Nor were they allowed fire teeth and abandoned roads. She’d taken on both to keep the Covenant oath, and if it helped get them to Trikovoi in one piece, she’d take up a sword, too.
Tavin stood, then looked about. Alarm shot through his face. “Where’s Jas?”
Fie twisted. The prince’s shadow had vanished from the pond.
“Right here.” Jasimir emerged at the other side of the fire, pot and bowl in hand. “What’s the matter?”
Tavin ran a hand over his face. “Nothing. It’s fine. I’m teaching Fie to use a sword, if you want to help.”
The prince looked from Tavin to her then, tallying up a sore kind of sum. He sat, slow. “I’ll … keep a lookout.” He glanced up. “Since we are being hunted by Vultures. In case anyone forgot.”
Tavin forced out an uneasy laugh. “If only.” He gestured to a patch of level ground a few paces away. “Let’s be clear of the fire.”
They were also clear of the prince’s earshot. Fie didn’t think that to be chance.
It would be naught but practice. Plain and easy as a game of Twelve Shells, and no more to it.
Fie knew a lie when she heard one. Even one she aimed at herself.
Tavin unsheathed his swords but set them in the grass near his feet, much to Fie’s relief. Instead he passed her an empty scabbard, then used the remaining scabbard to draw two marks in the dirt, dim by firelight. “Keep your feet on those. Now look at me.” She did. “Keep looking at me.” He circled to her right side, so her chin near lined up to her shoulder. “Hold up your, er, sword. Elbow loose. There. If you remember anything, let it be this.”
“Standing like a dolt?” Fie asked. Everything about it felt unnatural and foolish. The Vultures couldn’t possibly be watching, or she’d have heard their laughter.
“I know it doesn’t feel right.” A shade of Tavin’s normal grin flashed as he turned square to her and tapped one of his shoulders. “Here, try to hit me.” She took an awkward step forward and jabbed the scabbard into his shoulder easy enough, then retreated to her footmarks.
Tavin shifted, mirroring the stance he’d set her into: scabbard held out between them, the rest of him angled to the side. He tapped the same shoulder. “Again.”
She tried, but he all but brushed the strike aside. Now she saw: even if she got past his own weapon, she had to travel within his arm’s reach and then hit a shoulder still tilted askew from her.
“That’s why,” he said. “If anything will keep you alive, it’s this: be as small a target as you can. And always keep your weapon between you and your foe.” His mouth twisted. “All things considered, that will probably come naturally to you.”
She gave him a dark look. “Aye, and I bet hitting you will, too.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.” The grin that followed flashed more than a shade of his usual humor. “Short swords don’t have much range, but you have the element of surprise. Your best shot will be knocking a hit off course and using that opening to go for their hands, eyes, anything you can. Try to hit me, slowly.” She did. He brushed her strike off again, but then in a blink, he was closer, his scabbard tapping her forearm.
Fie narrowed her eyes. “What just happened?”
Tavin shifted back. “Watch. Block.” He pushed her scabbard away slow, firelight slipping along the lines of his scarred wrist. “Step in.” He stepped into the void. “Strike.” His scabbard completed an arc it had begun in the block, landing at her forearm again. “Now you—”
She moved before he finished. He automatically sprang out of her range, then sighed. “I knew I should have put off teaching you how to hit me.”
“You said to use the element of surprise.”
“Yes, on people who are trying to kill you!” He gave an exasperated laugh, a little too loud, then glanced to the prince.
Jasimir was listing sideways, chin propped on a palm. A snore betrayed him.
Relief flickered through Tavin’s expression.
Fie lowered her scabbard. “Why are you dragging it out?”
“I’m not,” he said, setting himself back into the sword stance. “I am fully prepared for you to hit me. Have at it.”
She scowled. Block. “You know what I mean.” Her scabbard pushed his aside. Her voice lowered. “You’re not going back to the palace.” Step in. “And he thinks you are.” Strike. She went for the throat. “You’ll die for him, but you won’t tell him the truth?”
Tavin’s face was unreadable; he did not move away. “What does it matter to you?”
“It’s a pain in my ass,” she hissed. Yet another half-lie. “And yours. He keeps harping on the Hawks because he needs to believe you’re all squeaky-clean and selfless, married to your duty.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
Fie stepped back. “What’s your duty to the prince?”
“To keep him alive.” Tavin nodded slowly. “To … to die for him.”
“Aye.” Fie shrugged. “So he needs to believe you’ll do it, and he’ll keep up that nonsense the whole way to the Marovar, just to prove it. Unless you tell him the truth.”
“It’s not that easy.” Tavin stepped back. “Again.”
Annoyance made her hasty. Block. “Twelve hells it isn’t.”
Step in. “It’s not about me,” Tavin said, “it’s the king.” Strike. “Again.”
“What’s the king to do with it?” Fie returned to her footmarks.
“King Surimir has a … a shine for Hawks.” Tavin frowned. By dark, Fie could pretend she hadn’t polished away his scars. “He’s the sort of king who travels with half an army just to remind people he commands their blades. He wants people to think he’s dangerous. To treat him like he is.”
Fie remembered the first time she’d held Phoenix fire. She hadn’t wanted to burn the world down; she’d wanted the world to know she could.
“He’s a Phoenix witch,” she mumbled. “He’s a king. Isn’t that enough?”
Tavin shook his head. “Again.” Block. “He married Queen Jasindra mostly to add her to his armory. I was given to Jas so he could start his own Hawk collection.” Step in. “But Surimir wants an imitator, not a son. Jas has no interest in throwing himself parades or yanking half the Splendid Castes into his bed. The queen raised him to be a good ruler. I was raised to be a good Hawk. You can guess which of us the king thinks is useful.”
Strike.
She knew what he meant, yet she couldn’t help another jab. “And how does you tumbling all those palace waifs help the prince, then?”
Fie hid her delight when he actually slipped. Then she tripped on her own snare: he righted himself, all fluster and fumble, and Fie discovered she found that disturbingly close to charming. Damn him. Of course he’d find a way to make stumbling about attractive.
“It—it would have been cruel to ask for more,” he said, blunt. “To try to make anything last.” She lowered her scabbard, feeling as though she’d waded into waters deeper than she’d thought. “I’m a bastard, an heir to nothing. For ten years, I’ve been told my only purpose is to keep Jas alive. That the best thing I can do is die for him. Of course I met people I wanted, but how could I ask them to stay mine when I couldn’t truly be theirs?”
Any sneer or jest had long withered on Fie’s tongue. “You’re still going to disappear once we’re out of this. What are you going to tell him then?”
“The truth. Fie, I promised I’d do everything I can to help you. I brought this on your family. I owe you a debt. And my life will be my own to give, as long as you would have it.” He raised his scabbard, and something frighteningly near hope rose in his voice. “Again.”
Fie tried to order her whirlwind thoughts and couldn’t even see where to start. Tavin’s arm moved through the dark.
He truly meant to vanish.
Block.
He meant to help her. To do everything he could. But she’d thought—
Step in.
She’d told herself he only had a tourist’s interest in her. That he found her at best a useful ally to woo, at worst the makings of a lurid boast to scandalize the other Hawks.
Not someone worth everything he had to give.
Some distant side of her unspooled Jasimir’s words short hours ago: He saved your life.
Strike.
Tavin did not step back. Neither did she, lingering too close, far too close, locked in their makeshift duel.
“When you said you don’t do what you want…” She trailed off, knowing stark what she asked, too unsteady to say the words aloud.
He bent his head to her, near enough that his hair dusted her brow. Fie didn’t mean to turn her face up, but her chin had a mind of its own.
“You know what I mean,” he whispered.
Fie’s traitor heart thundered its assent, even as her mind rattled through its protests. She ought to run, to cool her head, if only her feet would cooperate—she had to run, she couldn’t have what she wanted—not the way she wanted him—
Yet Tavin moved first. His breath caught; she felt its absence on her cheeks.
And then he stepped back.
Something old and familiar slid across his features easy as a paper screen, hiding any sign of the unpolished, unpracticed boy of a moment ago.
“It’s late,” he said, voice fraying at the very edges. “You should rest. I’ll take watch.”